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Piggyback

Get offa me.

Dear Word Detective: What’s the origin of “piggy back” as in, “I’ll just piggy back my new process onto your existing process”? It seems to imply that by piggy backing, you can take a shortcut, particularly by using something that has already been created. — Doug Phillips.

Well, that’s strange. I knew for a fact that I had written about “piggyback” (usually treated as one word) years ago, but when I checked my archive page, it wasn’t there. After tearing out about ten percent of my hair, I finally realized that I had actually written about “piggyback” for a children’s word-origins book. (Which is, as yet, unpublished. If anyone’s interested, drop me a line. We’ll do milk and animal crackers.) But something tells me that you’re not looking for an explanation that begins “One of the coolest things you can do when you’re a little kid is to get a grownup to give you a piggyback ride. You get to see what it’s like to be a lot taller, and you also get to find out how fast grownups can run when you shout ‘Giddyup!’ in their ears.”

Your mention of “process” in your question leads me to suspect that you are a computer programmer or software engineer, and that “piggybacking” in your field means using code that is already in place rather than beginning from the dreaded square one. But “piggyback” in that sense is a metaphorical extension of the literal meaning of “to carry something, especially another person, on one’s back.”

“Piggyback” has been around for quite a while, since at least the 16th century, and, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, “the expression has clearly been analyzed in many varying ways from a very early date” (translation: “many theories, no clear answer”). The earliest forms of the term, including “pick pack,” “pick back” and “pick-a-pack,” make no mention of pigs, so we can assume the bacon came later. The common element in these early forms, “pick,” is an old English dialect word related to “pitch” meaning “to throw or place” (as we “pitch a tent” today). The “pack” was most likely the load carried, whether inert or human, so “pick-a-pack,” for instance, might mean to “pick (put) the load on the bearer’s back.” The use of “back” in some early forms reinforces this interpretation.

By the 18th century, “pickaback” had become the dominant form, but there was a problem. The “back” part was clear, but no one at that point understood where the “picka” came from. So through a process fairly common in language known as “folk etymology,” people replaced the part of the word that made no sense (“picka”) with one that sorta, maybe, kinda did (“piggy”). Voila, “piggyback.” Of course, it didn’t really make sense, since pigs would vigorously resist transport in such fashion, but at least it sounded like normal English.

Figurative uses of “piggyback” are fairly recent, dating back just to the 20th century, and most of those have involved carrying one thing on another (e.g., trucks on flatbed railway cars).

10 comments to Piggyback

Politely disagree… anyone who has grown up around young pigs should know where the term “piggyback” comes from. Young pigs will play this game for hours… jumping on the back of littermate with the fore feet and holding on as long as they can or until the “ridee” gets tired of the game and either sits down or rolls over.

Actually, as I understand it, it originates from hog hunting. The hunter ties the dead hogs legs together around his waist and holding the pigs front hooves, Piggy Backs the hog to his vehicle which may be several kilometers away.

I would go with the original reason set down by the author of this definition. I am reading J. Meade Falkner’s ‘Moonfleet’ Written in 1898. In chapter 10 the main character is trying to escape with a broken foot; “. . . and then, while he knelt down upon the path, I climbed up from behind upon him, putting my arms round his neck; so he bore me “pickaback.” I shut my eyes firm again, and thus we moved along another spell . . .” I’m guessing piggy back simply evolved from ‘pickaback’ as you can imagine saying the word quickly and a three year old will think you said piggyback.

I noticed the phrase “pick-a-back” in 19th century English used in a way which is conceptually identical to “piggyback,” so even before reading this (thanks by the way!) I suspected the “pig” part was a corruption of “pick.”
None of which have anything to do with a pig pickin’, incidentally.

I found thread this looking for the word for the human bearer of other humans. Rich people were born this way across trails that could not support a palanquin. I suppose the practice goes back millennia and “pick a back” makes good sense, the strong guy to carry you up the mountain. I am still looking for the word and a word for the human saddle/chair.